


Mood Alterations

by chucks_prophet



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cursing Because It's Gavin, Emotionally Constipated Gavin Reed, First Kiss, Jewelry, M/M, Mood Jewelry, Non graphic depiction of violence, working a case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:15:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23640679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: Gavin glances up to meet Nines’ kind gray eyes, the kind of gray he takes comfort in from the burning end of a cigarette.He wants nothing more than to fill his lungs with Nines.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 3
Kudos: 131





	Mood Alterations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ralsbecket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ralsbecket/gifts).



> Hi! This is my first fic into the Detroit: Become Human fandom so if I've gotten some canon things wrong, I do apologize.
> 
> Inspired by the latest Detroit: Become Human fan movie, Detroit: Evolution. Incredible. Go check it out if you haven't already rewatched it a dozen times like I have.

**Mood Alterations**

Of all things, Nines did not expect to undergo a month of programming development to end up in a ball pit.

It should be an open-and-shut case. A man found dead in play pen of children’s establishment, clutching his chest. But a heart attack isn’t this gory. A heart attack doesn’t open a hole in your chest and expose your insides.

As the Detectives discuss a potential motive with the wife, Nines scrolls through the victim’s criminal history on his interface. Other than a couple minor traffic violations, there’s nothing else on his record. However, his family history is interesting. Released in December 2035, his brother is an ex-con on parole after his second assault and battery. His parole officer is a well-respected member of the CyberLife community. Maybe Nines can reach out to her and get a better insight on—

"Maddie. Maddie!"

Nines swivels his head to a child slipping through the yellow tape. As she's hunkering down to grab something, his operating system identifies her as Madison Mahoney, age 3, born at Saint Detroit Hospital at 3:33am weighing 5lbs/4 oz, daughter to Suzanne Mahoney and…

The victim.

"Get her out of here!" Lieutenant Anderson barks to the CSAs swarming the scene.

"Sweetie," Detective Gavin Reed beckons. He crouches down next to the little girl. She’s clasping a necklace with an oval pendant that she swiped from her father’s deadweight hand. "Unfortunately, we're gonna need that particular necklace."

The girl turns around, eyes blooming with tear pedals that wilt and die on her cheeks. In an instant, the pendant turns from a navy blue to coal black, the kind that’s empty and lonely. "B-but—"

"Tell you what; I'll get you a brand new one." Gavin anchors her with his right hand on her tiny shoulder. "I thought I saw one way cooler at the prizes booth anyway. Do you like dolphins?"

That gets her attention. She nods vigorously. A bright pink cuts through the hollow black.

"Alright. I'll finagle one of those necklaces for you from the nice prizes man before we leave today. Sound good?"

Smiling with all her teeth - minus one gap where her left canine should be - the girl hands over the necklace and runs back through the tape to her family.

"Son of a bitch," Anderson mumbles to no one in particular, "goddamnit—"

Anderson’s voice is but a distant buzzing in Nines’ hearing aid the closer he follows Gavin, who's heading outside, away from his crew, the family, and the curious spectators gathered outside the entrance.

"Wow."

Gavin doesn't lift his head, but the coarseness in his tone that's a side effect of chain-smoking and one too many sleepless nights resurfaces again, "What?"

Nines shrugs, something humans do when they try not to make a big deal of things. He doesn’t want to rattle Gavin more than he already is. "Nothing. I've just never seen you quite so... gentle."

"You make me sound like a fucking pansy."

"You know that was not my intention."

Rolling his eyes before looking up to Nines, Gavin says, "Kids are different.”

"I’d say so.”

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she seemed particularly unfazed at her father's passing,” Nines points out. “I thought all humans are equipped with a built-in processor that allows them to feel. She doesn’t seem to be in mourning at all.”

"She's not unaffected, Nines," Gavin says. He produces cigarette and a lighter from his leather jacket and places the roll-up between his mouth. "Pro-aly ‘inks ‘e's taking a nap."

"What makes you so confident?"

Gavin takes a drag. In doing so, he paints the gray asphalt a burning ember and the blue sky a ghostly gray. Despite Nines’ “nagging” as Gavin refers to it with one-sided amusement, smoking is the only time Gavin truly breathes—be it into the bitter Detroit air or into Nines’ face.

"We’re strangers to our emotions when we’re born,” Gavin explains, leftover smoke billowing from his mouth, “we cry because it’s the only thing we know works to get what we want.”

“She cried over the necklace,” Nines says, “clearly she wants the jewelry more than—”

“She’s crying because she doesn’t know any better,” Gavin interjects sharply. “Her sole focus is on the necklace, and that’s how we should keep it.”

“Why? Why deprive her of that knowledge? Her father—”

“Is being shipped to the nearest morgue!”

Gavin pinches the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. He swings his head back to the crowd, their attention now on him. His mouth parts. He licks his lips as if to speak, but trades his words for one last drag of his cigarette. He snuffs it out with the flick of his finger and the grind of his boot.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” Nines says to Gavin’s back, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Silence followed by heavy breathing. Gavin’s shoulders stiffen even more, like a wounded animal.

“The pendant… it seemed to possess advanced sensory abilities, like the kind I was programmed with. Maybe it can help these kids recognize and process their emotions, even some as complex as death—”

“Forget about the damn pendant,” hisses Gavin through what sounds like grinding teeth. “They don’t work. Some overworked kid in China probably made it for two cents.”

Nines shakes his head. “No. No, I saw it change colors when Maddie held it. It tracked her emotions.”

“It tracked _shit_.”

“Where are you going, Detective?”

“Getting that little girl her consolation prize!” he yells, weaving his way through the crowd.

-.-

A soft knock from Detective Reed’s office door adds cadence to the unsynchronized thoughts swirling around in his head. It also makes him jump, rather than reach for his gun. Gavin wonders if this means he’s getting soft. Or if it’s indicative of something worse. Something his mandated visits with the academy’s psychologist were trying to prevent.

But when he sees that familiar Ken Doll face through the glass, Gavin grumbles, “Come in.”

“What’re you still doing here?”

“I can ask the same thing of you, tin can.”

“I’m the most advanced Android ever made, Detective, I—”

“ _To date,_ ” Gavin corrects in a way that’s meant to humble Nines (and take him down a robotic peg or two), but that clearly, judging by the furrow in his brows that cross on Confusion Street and Concern Line, don’t process. “This case is tough,” he says with a defeated sigh.

Nines steps further into Gavin’s office, going as far as sitting on the edge of his desk. It catches the detective by surprise. Such a human mannerism. “All cases are challenging when you don’t have the motive or the perpetrator. What makes this one particularly difficult?”

Folding his arms tightly over his chest as he leans back in his chair, Gavin responds, “I don’t know.”

“Clearly you do.”

“What’re you, the Thought Police?”

Nines ditches Concern Lane and takes a one-way trip down Confused Street.

“It’s a…. novel… from the forties, about—”

“A dystopian future with a totalitarian government structure that criminalizes thoughts of rebellion.”

Gavin shakes his head with a scoff. “God, I hate when you go all Google dictionary on me.”

“Apologies, Detective.”

“I don’t know,” he repeats, “I guess this one’s personal.”

“As opposed to other homicides?”

Gavin glances down. His hands suddenly feel suffocated in the lock he has them in, so he unfolds his arms and stares into the dirt-encrusted creases between his nails. “I never got the chance to be a kid. Maddie won’t either. Not after she saw her dad with a Looney Tunes hole in his chest.”

“But you said it yourself. Kids don’t process emotions the same way a full-grown adult does.”

“Exactly,” Gavin agrees. “Meaning, she won’t fully process this until she’s an adult. And before that, she’ll be attending a wake, a funeral, and living every day after that thinking her dad’s on an extended vacation without her.”

Nines’ mouth creases into a frown. “That sounds awful, Gavin.”

Gavin scoffs again. This time it’s choked. He inhales deeply to hide his sniffle. “Yeah.”

Another silence sits between them like a masked man with a gun. Gavin can’t see the face of the intruder, but his familiar beady eyes as bottomless as the barrel of the gun he’s holding bore into him all the same.

Then, he feels something break that menacing barrier: Nines’ hands on top of his.

Gavin glances up to meet Nines’ kind gray eyes, the kind of gray he takes comfort in from the burning end of a cigarette.

He wants nothing more than to fill his lungs with Nines.

When that realization hits him, he flinches back. It’s a startled movement that sends something flying from Gavin’s hand. It vibrates like a penny before landing the tile beneath them.

“Is that—the necklace from the _crime scene?”_

Nines chokes out a laugh. Gavin would do the same at his partner’s breakthrough at a human stammer (that Nines would no doubt call a “malfunction in the hardware”) if he wasn’t so appalled. “I may have removed it from the evidence bag to examine its properties further.”

“Nines, I told you, it _doesn’t work_.”

“Are you positive, Detective?”

“Of course I’m fucking positive, why wouldn’t I be?!”

“Because according to that color, it says you’re feeling quite smitten with me right now.”

Gavin shoots his head to the floor. The pendant is unmistakably a deep purple.

“I… c’mon, Nines.” Gavin attempts his best laugh. “I know how I feel! You said it yourself: Humans have our own built-in processor. Why would I need a Peter Piper Pendant telling me?”

“Because you actively fight against your internal processor more than anyone I know,” Nines says with a smirk, standing up so he’s towering over Gavin at his desk chair.

Gavin stands up with him, but not before closing his eyes and sighing deeply. “Goddamn it,” he mutters before pulling Nines into a hungry kiss.


End file.
